


Hard to Be a God

by orphan_account



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Control Ending, Earthborn Commander Shepard, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-14
Updated: 2012-11-13
Packaged: 2017-11-18 15:08:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 14
Words: 17,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/562397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been one year since the subjugation of the Reapers and one month since the Normandy's return to Council space. The galaxy has entered an uneasy truce with the Reapers, but when a lone ship breaks off from the fleet, Spectre Kaidan Alenko is tasked with making contact with the Reaper and discerning its mission. He may end up finding out more about his dead lover than he ever wanted to know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Mass Effect Big Bang 2012 and hastily posted to Dreamwidth at the last second. I've decided to cross-post it here in a format somewhat approaching legibility. Some art is by the excellent and lovely Trilliath, who can be found at trilliath.tumblr.com or here on Ao3.
> 
> Thanks a lot to alishatorn for organizing the Big Bang, to Trilliath for the illustrations, and to everybody for reading.

It's always the same dream, and it starts with the memory.

 

The silence of deep space. The silence of fear, of human bodies pressed together in the evac shuttle, scent of amine and canned air. (And every Marine with a zero-g cert wishes at some point they could hear it, see it, feel the fight in that animal way every soldier has had the privilege of knowing up until Relay 314. Every few seconds debris from the Normandy pings off the hull and makes the vessel shudder. You almost couldn’t make the connection. It would have meant something to see the fire.)

 

Any second now.

 

Split second of static on the comm line, split second of hope before the voice.

 

"Kaidan? Anybody? Oh, shit, please tell me at least one of you is out there."

 

It's Joker. Something's wrong. There’s a sick feeling in the pit of Kaidan’s stomach he refuses to think about.

 

"This is Lieutenant Alenko. I read you."

 

"I thought he’d be right behind me, I swear.”

 

"What’s going on? Where's Shepard?"

 

"The geth swung around for another shot, the Normandy broke in fucking half, everything was coming apart. He couldn’t - he hit the evac switch. He did it for me.”

 

No.

 

Joker's talking faster. Pushing back the guilt.

 

"I had the back cameras up, I just, I wanted to see her go, you know? I watched him. It was fucking horrible. She threw him like a rag doll, back of his suit all tore up, he was struggling - I saw the body, Kaidan. I saw the body stop moving."

 

An image blooms in Kaidan's mind, and for the rest of his life he’ll see Shepard’s death with perfect clarity, as if he had been shown a picture. He sees him panic and die.

 

"Why did you tell me that, Joker? Why the hell did you tell me that?"

 

"I don't know, okay? I'm sorry!"

 

Grief comes to him in a hard wave. Metallic pain sings through his brain pan, and Kaidan nearly vomits. He forces it to pass. Ice in Kaidan’s throat, his voice strange and slow. He takes it one word at a time. It's the most difficult thing he'll ever say.

 

“It’s all right, Joker,”he tells him. "The geth did this."

 

He kills the link.

 

No sound but the shuttle engines, falling into an easy rhythm. They’re farther from the Normandy. No debris. They’re all watching him the way you watch somebody in public making a scene. Eyes on him heavy as lead. And still, nobody’s saying a damn word.

 

A beat. Two. Then a transmission skips in on the line -

 

“This is Captain Tarbell of the SSV Montreal, we’re picking up a distress signal in the area. Shepard, what’s going on?”

 

“Montreal, this is Staff Lieutenant Alenko. Shepard’s dead.”He lets himself take a breath. Let it sink in for them all. (‘Oh, Goddess,’someone murmurs - Liara - but her voice is so small it drowns.) “The Normandy’s gone. Most of the crew made it to the evac shuttles. There are hostiles in the area. Repeat, there are hostiles.”

 

“We’re sending in a couple cruisers. The Montreal’s swinging by for pickup. How many shuttles?”

 

“Six. One’s coming late.”

 

“Relaying coordinates. We’ll speak on the Montreal, Lieutenant. Tarbell out.”

 

A couple taps and all the shuttles are synched up. And nobody’s talking. Still, nobody’s talking.

 

Kaidan crams himself into the a half-empty seat, between a wall of a marine and Liara. She makes a perfunctory attempt at moving her knees and elbows and thighs. Down the line somebody whispers something to the soldier next to her, and the levee breaks. Another voice, then another, confusion and worry and pain. In the din Kaidan rests his head back against the bulkhead and sobs, three times, harsh and dry as a bone. No one’s eyes are on him, thank God. And then it’s over.

 

And three years later Kaidan is dreaming, and he dreams about that first night on another ship, marines bivouacking on the floor of the cargo bay, extra sheets smelling like plastic and Kaidan staring at the monstrous shadows in the starlight trying to divine what his life is going to be like now. And in his dreams he doesn't finally doze off, telling himself for the first time out of dozens that he'll follow orders and the Council can handle the Reapers and the Alliance doesn't pay him to think about death. In his dreams it's just he goes somewhere else, or he finds himself there (or the world suddenly becomes a different place around him). Somewhere dark and safe like the Normandy after hours with the running lights softly glowing and exhaust from the drive core skimming past the window like a skipping stone. Or the bedroom in the farmhouse at the orchard, when he was so young.

 

He’s within a darkness like a blanket, and there’s his old workstation by the sleeper pods, and somehow Shepard is there - in Kaidan's dreams, he just turns up, takes death in stride and waits for the rest of the world to catch up with him - brushes past him, the back of his hand beneath Kaidan’s navel, surge of longing tight in the pit of his stomach. On the SR1 that was as far as he got, a moment like that, and he'd take care of himself before he regained his senses, in the wake of something confused and half formed and erotic.

 

But it's three years later and Kaidan is in love with Shepard, after all this time, and he knows what it's like to have another man. So this the part in Kaidan's dreams where his lips are on his and Shepard touches his face. And this is the part in his dreams where Shepard is beneath him, and Kaidan has to watch his eyes go unfocused, the way they do before death. This is the part in his dreams where Shepard's voice is small and quiet and confused, where he says the same thing each time,

 

"Kaidan? Kaidan, I can't breathe."

 

This is the part where Kaidan doesn't help him. This is the part where he wakes up.

**Art by Trilliath**

So he wakes up, and he doesn’t want to go to sleep again. He runs into Liara by mistake. They circle each other like a couple of animals for a bit. Some nights are so private that being anything other than the last sentient being in the universe feels like an invasion. But they can bear each other. They’ve both been through a lot. They go and have coffee together in the mess hall. Kaidan doesn’t want to check the time, but he figures an hour before anyone else will get up, maybe two if they’re lucky.

 

They don’t talk for a long while. Then Liara speaks up:

 

“While I was working on my dissertation my mother told me there are two kinds of scientists. The ones who go to bed early and sleep very little, and the ones who can’t sleep until it’s light. Either way, we’re all there to see the dawn.”

 

“I like that.”

 

“I think it was supposed to be some kind of comment on how I was sleeping until mid-afternoon.”

 

Kaidan watches the steam rise from the cup, slight condensation on the ceramic. The Normandy is chilly in the morning air. Most of the systems are still offline, no climate control, and there are breaches in the hull that haven’t been dealt with. It doesn’t feel quite right, doesn’t fit the ship he calls home. Makes him too aware of how much of the Normandy is artificial, metal and glass and plastic.

 

“You know, I don’t know why I’m still dreaming about two years ago. There were so many close calls. The fight with Sovereign, the Triton mech …“

 

“He drank ryncol once.”

 

“Oh, God. Really?”

 

“It was poisoned.”

 

“If I ever see him alive again, I’m going to kill him.”

 

It’s not as funny as it was in Kaidan’s head. It wasn’t very funny there to begin with.

 

“You know what the worst part of it is?”he tells Liara. “You’re …young. In a manner of speaking, anyway. I don’t know if you’ve been through this. Maybe asari don’t do it like this at all. But right after you decide you want to be with someone, you’re still figuring stuff out. You have to relearn how to act around each other, think about each other. Settle all your old history. I was trying to power through it, but we were both still in that phase. I never really learned how to talk to him.”

 

Liara’s eyes turn slightly inward. A gesture you don’t notice unless you know her well, and Kaidan does.

 

“There was always something …remote about the commander. Untouchable. At one time I believed it was because he was touched by a piece of ancient history. Of course, recently I’ve come to discover that was naive.”

 

Kaidan cracks a smile. Javik’s gotten about ten times worse since being stranded.

 

“No, I get it. He always knew he was going to be the hero. That was one thing I - loved about him. I would have done anything for him. Could have done anything. You only had to look at him to feel like you were capable of doing great things.”

 

There’s a lull in the conversation. They each have their own moment to remember.

 

They fall out of the habit of speaking, but Liara stays until she can’t pretend to nurse an empty mug anymore. And when she leaves she turns at the door. “For what it’s worth …“she begins, carefully. “I may not be the best judge of these things as an individual. But in my professional opinion as an information broker, he had been in love with you for many years.”

 

There’s a warmth in his chest, however brief, and then he’s just left with the ache. “Thanks, Liara. You ought to get back to work. I’ll be fine.”

 

He goes to Shepard’s cabin and presses his face in the cool linen, and lays there unmoving for what little is left of the night. He buries himself in the memory of the night they shared together, the feeling of the man he loves laying with his back against him, until he can feel the heat on his stomach. He pictures himself saying all the should have said before they fell asleep. I love you. I’ve always loved you. I’ll keep you safe.

 

Somehow the crew has decided, without anyone having mentioned it or probably even thought of it consciously at all, that Shepard’s cabin wasn’t to be disturbed. It’s all still there, the whiskey in the corner, the two glasses. No one goes in except for Kaidan. He sleeps there more often than not. Everyone knows. No one says anything at all.

 

It had been his bed.


	2. 2

"I still don't see him. You know, Vega, I'd stop crowding if I were you, turians have notoriously pointy elbows."

 

"There has to be more than a thousand people out there," says Kaidan. "He's got to be one of them."

 

The Normandy eases into the airlock. There's the distant whoosh of air, the floor gives a firm shake as the vessel locks in. Used to be a comforting feeling, once. Kaidan's stomach turns. Garrus glances towards him. "You sure you're ready for this, Commander?"

 

"Ready as I'll ever be."

 

EDI cheerfully disinfects them.

 

And of course the vid drones get to him first. Reporters, Alliance soldiers shouting "Clear a path! Clear a path!"

 

" -- Khalisah al-Jilani with the evening news, and here we're at the site of the Alliance ship Normandy's triumphant return to Citadel space -- "

 

His eyes are in the crowd. His ears are in the crowd. And Shepard's going to make an entrance, he'll come bounding up to him with that lopsided grin, in whatever silly uniform they stuck him in, (there's a tremendous pressure behind Kaidan's forehead) and dress blues be damned, when he sees Kaidan he'll

 

" -- including Major Kaidan Alenko, the only human Spectre."

 

The only human Spectre.

 

The vids caught his expression. He saw himself on the extranet feeds for weeks, got to watch his heart break again from every angle.

 

On behalf of the Systems Alliance, Admiral Hackett would like to formally welcome the crew of the Normandy home. Applause. A proud smile is on his face, and his chest is swollen with medals. He looks at Kaidan expectantly.

 

"Where the hell is Shepard?"

 

The discomfort in the crowd is palatable, spreads like color from a smoke grenade.

 

Hackett, quietly: "I'm sorry, son. That wasn't the way I wanted you to find out."

 

There's a hand on his shoulder. Joker's taking over, thank God. It's all clapping and talking and ritual again, and the world temporarily forgets. Kaidan stands there and continues to stand there. "Open-mouthed" would be the way to put it, if his mouth was open. He's not thinking about Shepard, he's not thinking about the crowd. He just thinks of the funny little turns of phrase his mother would use to describe it - like a lump on a log, like lox on the page, like a dead dog in the sun. What a thing to think about now.

 

Everything that happens after that reminds him of when the SR1 went down. There are debriefings, reassignments, a sort of general helpless attitude when it came to figuring out what to do with the aliens. (He calls his mother, tells her he's alive again for the time being. Dad's officially KIA, she tells him. But he knew that. Was expecting it. In a way he was expecting Shepard's death too. They did the little ceremony before they took off, his name on the memorial wall, don't get your hopes up, Alenko.) He feels lucky having the Alliance to push him along. They give Kaidan some kind of incumbent position, a place to stay, something something the Council wants to see him. Probably figure they've lost him to Spectre work.

 

There's some talk about giving him the Normandy. Kaidan's not sure he wants it. (He's got time to think it over - it has through all kinds of decontamination and testing. For all the crew knew there was some kind of corrosive, Normandy-eating bacteria living in the air vents. A salarian had made some kind of comment about how they had managed to survive the first couple weeks with the water purification system on the Normandy broken - obviously he had never been camping. They had just boiled it.)

 

The Council does, in fact, contact him right away. He's glad for it. Too long on that planet, too long to let it hurt. He needed to get his game face back on.

 

Kaidan doesn't recognize any of them. He's too tired to ask any questions. He does recognize the face they patch into the chamber -

 

"You're Miranda Lawson."

 

"Spectre Alenko," she says by way of a greeting, and flashes him a confident smile.

 

"How is Oriana?" he asks.

 

Her smile falters a bit and a ghost of something passes over her face. (Strange for someone she barely knows to ask her something so personal, so sincerely. Something about the alchemy of the Normandy crew - of any crew - and Miranda wishes, not for the first time, that she had had longer to experience it.)

 

"She's well," she replies, and leaves it at that. "To make a long story short, I've taken over Cerberus," she says, breezily. "Or, I'm now controlling most of its assets. Not an easy task, I assure you."

 

Kaidan's eyes flicker to the Council.

 

"Well. Congratulations. I hope you're putting it to good use."

 

"Oh, I am. What do you know about the Reaper fleet?"

 

"Less than anyone else. I'm sure you've seen it on the news. On our way back to civilization we ran right into a pack of them, working on the Hawking Eta relay. I nearly had my flight lieutenant open fire."

 

"Go down fighting. Interesting choice. It's a good thing the Alliance picked up your signal before you did anything rash."

 

"Yeah," says Kaidan, a little helplessly. He's had conversations like this before - they sound like small talk, which is exhausting enough on its own, but it's small talk building up to something he isn't going to like.

 

"You know the Reapers have been working on the relays which have been damaged since the firing of the Crucible. You might not have heard that they've gone silent since then. I've heard Harbinger's voice myself ... They're clearly choosing not to communicate with us. We have no idea what their motives are and I, for one, am not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt."

 

Some part of Kaidan hears her tone of voice and choice of words and immediately thinks of the pundits going on the extranet and chewing scenery about some race or another - completely alien way of thinking! We have no idea what their motives are! And after the Contact War, I'm not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

 

But he can't exactly disagree with her. Especially not just because she's Cerberus. Or was Cerberus. Or literally is Cerberus, apparently.

 

(You abandoned Shepard even though you knew he was right, says a particularly vicious part of his brain, are you going to do it again?)

 

"What are you proposing?" asks Kaidan, folding his arms.

 

"What if I told you I had a Reaper capital ship?"

 

"How'd you get it?" asks Kaidan, quickly. "Those things are nearly impossible to take down. Cerberus can't possibly - "

 

"Have the manpower and military strength, no. Not any longer. I've taken care of that, Alenko." Her mouth thinned. It was not a pleasant memory. "I'm talking strictly capital. I have control of investments, the deeds to research facilities, eezo stockpiles. I've kept most of the scientists on the payroll, but that's all. Believe me, we're doing good work."

 

"So how did you get the Reaper?"

 

"Simple. It gave itself up. It broke off from the fleet. It spent a while in complete inactivity in the Sol system. I sent ships out to investigate, maybe it had been weakened or disabled somehow - or maybe it was planning something. Either way, we were able to contain it."

 

The asari councilor finally interjects. "Ms. Lawson informed the Systems Alliance and then the Council. After observing fleet behavior for the past several months we no longer believe the Reapers pose an immediate threat, but Ms. Lawson has personally convinced me that anomalous behavior necessitates an investigation."

 

There was a lot of politicking going on, Kaidan realizes. Miranda must have known how bad it would look sending Cerberus scientists to study a derelict Reaper. Better ask for a Spectre instead, put on a big show of working with and for the Council like an upstanding citizen.

 

"In any case," added the turian councilor, who seemed curiously bored by all of it, "we've got to get down to the bottom of this, sooner or later. We still have no idea what happened the day Shepard fired the Crucible."

 

Shepard. His name like a bullet. Kaidan lets it enter him and pass straight through.

 

"So you're sending me to poke around."

 

"In so many words, yes," says Miranda smoothly. "Just board the Reaper, and find out anything you can."

 

"We'll give you an official Council mission statement later," said the salarian councilor aridly. Kaidan's filled with sudden admiration at Miranda's ability to give orders to a Council Spectre, in front of the Council itself, without even thinking twice about it. And they were actually sitting back and listening!

 

"I'm sending an old friend to go with you. You both served on the Normandy and I believe you helped turn her into a functional instructor at Grissom."

 

Jack. Kaidan gets a contact tension headache.

 

"Yeah, I ... remember her orientation. You're not thinking of making her a Spectre, are you?"

 

The councilors exchange looks. Kaidan prays a dry sense of humor translates into Galactic. "Do you have any questions before accepting this mission, Spectre Alenko?" asks the asari.

 

"Just one." He steps closer to the hologram of Miranda. "Did Shepard trust you?"

 

"I like to think that he did."

 

It's the glib response, the one you'd give to any measure of stuffed shirt, and it infuriates Kaidan, but Miranda, to her credit, continues:

 

"I'll be honest with you, Kaidan. I don't know. He didn't trust Cerberus. Not for a moment. And I've done and said things I'm not proud of. Some of which he knows about. But he's done a lot for me regardless. For Oriana and her family. Yes, I would like to think that he trusted me."

 

"Then I'll take your mission on one condition."

 

"And what is that?"

 

"I want the flash-bang. I'm a Council Spectre. If I end up indoctrinated, it puts all four of them at risk. I need to know I can be taken down."

 

Miranda smiled at him. Oddly enough, it seemed genuine. "You'll be glad to know I'll be monitoring all your activity personally."

 

"Yeah. Well, keep your finger on the trigger."


	3. 3

There it is.

 

Kaidan still feels a visceral revulsion at the sight of a Reaper. Upright, it looks like a tick, bulging with blood. Worse when they’re in the air. They’re like hands, claws. They don’t move right, not like a ship should. Carapaces of metal moving smooth as muscle, opening like fingers coming down on you. Why would they even need to open? Kaidan wonders. He tries to imagine a Reaper grabbing onto something and it makes him want to laugh and tremble at the same time.

 

He used to have these terrors, back when he was very young, when his family came to live in Vancouver. He remembers being at the base of one of those hundred-foot buildings, his mother telling him to look up, and he panicked just looking at the size of it, afraid of something he didn’t understand. Like it would collapse or suddenly explode, and there was nowhere he could turn to escape from it, filling his vision and making it impossible to look at anything else. Like vertigo in reverse, or claustrophobia in an open city.

 

He sighs and looks down at the ground hard, stepping into the elevator with Jack.

 

“This was an old missile silo, wasn’t it?”he asks, seeing the walls.

 

It’s the first thing either of them had said since they met up on the transport. “I had him first,”Jack had said. Instead of hello. And it was short and brutal and to the point. Nothing else was needed. And Kaidan sat there stewing for a while, trying to figure out how he felt about that, trying to figure out how Jack felt about that, and then trying to figure out how he felt about Jack feeling - and then he decided on “bad”and went to check his armor and clean his guns.

 

“Uh, sure. Are you asking me or telling me?”Jack responds.

 

“Both, I guess. Cerberus didn’t put much of an effort into renovating it. Looks like they just carved a rectangle out of the control center to make room, you can see where the girders suddenly stop. Where the floors begin and end.”

 

“Architecture major, huh?”

 

“You’d be surprised how often it comes in handy, just paying a little attention to your surroundings. Don’t tell me you haven’t crawled through a few vents in your time.”

 

“Vents and worse, cowboy.”

 

They’re using the structure as anchoring, have belays driven deep into the steel. Aircraft cable wraps around the Reaper, thick as Kaidan’s waist. For all the good it would do.

 

The elevator stops at the last level. Kaidan glances down the shaft and gets dizzy. They ran out of silo and just cut into the earth. There’s a couple feet of concrete supporting the silo and then all the way down, it’s hard packed soil and rock.

 

“Guess this is my stop.”Jack steps off in a tiny, unpleasantly green room with a damp cement floor and the most antique computer equipment Kaidan’s ever seen. “Wow, this is Soviet-era stuff. Feel like I should put on a bonnet and get a butter churn.”

 

“Don’t touch anything. Please.”

 

“Yeah, I’m not stupid,”Jack says, her voice low as a growl. Kaidan realizes all of a sudden how frightened she is. She’s got her chin lifted, her eyes darting like an animal’s. Wary. She kicks a swivel chair out from under a panel and sits down, her feet up on the computer, making a show of nonchalance. “Hey. Be careful. Don’t do anything dumb. Whatever that thing is, it knows where Shepard’s gone, and we’re gonna find him. I’m not going to be the one who has to explain that his boy toy went and fell down an elevator shaft when he comes home.”

 

Kaidan gives her a stiff nod. “I’ll be on the other end of the comm. You know what to look for, right? I do too, so talk to me if you start feeling anything, thinking anything. Anything happens, I don’t respond - well. Biotics blazing, right?”

 

“Biotics blazing.”

 

Kaidan hits the elevator button. Watches himself drop away from civilization.

 

“You know, this seems weird,”says Jack, in his ear. “The whole - this. Dunno how to put it. You know, we found the derelict Reaper in orbit. Above Mnemosyne, I think. Silent as the grave. And even that was creepy.”

 

“I know what you mean. They’ve got aircraft cable, a 47-ton blast door. Hid it underground like a treasure. As if any of it meant anything. If it came alive right now it would throw this whole place like - ”

 

A rag doll.

 

“- like a dog shaking off a fly. It’s here because it wants to be. We’re here because it lets us.”

 

“Yeah, wow. I really needed you to put all those wonderful thoughts I was having into words.”

 

Miranda had even had them disinfect the place. Like you’d get salmonella off the damn thing. Same brand the Alliance uses, smells clean and blue in that chemical sort of way, big overdose of calone. Smells like stepping onto the Normandy. Like coming home.

 

Funny. The smell was getting stronger the closer Kaidan got to the bottom, mixing with the damp earth scent. Must have set off a disinfectant bomb on the ground, Kaidan thought idly.

 

The elevator rattles disconcertingly before grinding to a halt. Kaidan sighs impatiently. He hates these temp setups. At least he’s on solid ground now.

 

He takes a breath, and looks.

 

“Wow,”he whispers. There it is. So high he can’t see the end of it, and it’s on the same ground. It’s got shape, being, mass. It’s resting on the ground, lighter than it should be, like a pianist’s fingers trembling on the keys. Poised to strike. Maybe the mass effect field’s keeping it upright. Kaidan doesn’t know.

 

The shields are up, glowing cold blue into the darkness of the shaft. Aside from the LEDs on the elevator every five feet, there’s no light.

 

A god is a verb. Warps reality just by being there.

 

“Hey, there’s something I need to tell you, but the cheerleader said not to until you were underground.”

 

“Shoot.”

 

“You have your amp in, right? The one she gave you?”

 

Kaidan feels for it at the top of his head automatically. “Yeah.”

 

“With the neural shielding. And the flash-bang.”

 

“Oh yeah.”

 

“Well, the flash-bang’ll go if you take the amp off or shut it down. Conniving little bitch, isn’t she?”

 

Kaidan gives a dry laugh. “Honestly, I’m glad. Still can’t believe the Council signed off on this.”

 

“Just something to think about before you go banging your skull on the bulkhead.”

 

“Thanks. I found the door. It’s …well, it’s a door. Looks like it could be the airlock on any other ship.”

 

Jack doesn’t say anything. Not the time for a quip. Even to her.

 

“Yeah. I’ll tell her you’re ready. Miranda? We’re fine down here. Open her up.”

 

On the comm, very faint: “Good luck down there, you two.”

 

The shielding fades. It takes a second for Kaidan to adjust to the light. The LEDs do nothing, but the door is glowing a dull orange. Kaidan touches his omnitool, pulling the flashlight up.

 

His assault rifle’s in his hands. He doesn’t expect trouble, or the trouble he expects won’t be the kind he can shoot, but it’s good to have something to hold onto.

 

“I guess the door is like a barrier?”He reaches for it, but his hand goes right through. No, it’s just light. Not a bit of resistance. “Huh.”

 

He goes quiet. Seems like the right thing to do. You go quiet the moment before you step into a church. Or a tomb.

 

Kaidan steps inside. A second passes like a knife through the air. Then nothing. He feels the muscles in his shoulders relaxing by a milimeter.

 

“Okay. I’m in.”

 

“What do you see?”Jack.

 

“I don’t know yet. It’s dark.”

 

He makes a sweep with his rifle, the beam on his wrist following the muzzle.

 

“I guess I’m in kind of a corridor. I - whoa!”

 

“Shit! What’s going on?”

 

“Wall jumped out at me. Didn’t expect a turn like that. Can’t see any farther than my light.”

 

“Yeah. I was there on the Collector base. With Shepard. Got all fucked up just walking around places. Like the walls didn’t come together right.”

 

“It’s …I don’t know. Different. It’s not bad. It’s like I told you. It wants me to be here.”

You catch more flies with honey.

 

“Alenko, you’re aboard a fucking Reaper. I’d say it’s just about the worst place in the galaxy right now.”

 

“It’s hard to explain.”

 

Kaidan falls silent. The air is warm, still and humid. Sort of tropical. Strange to think of himself as being on a ship, in a closed off space. The walls are narrow, but not enough to be uncomfortable. The ceiling’s low. (Or he’d imagine. He can’t see it.) Feels - private. Yeah. That’s the word.

 

He can feel the presence of the Reaper. The way you feel another person beside you in the room. It’s not menacing. Not godlike. He’s not even sure if it’s watching him. But all around him he can sense a living thing. I’ve been scooped up, he thinks to himself. It’s holding me in its hand.

 

Another corner.

 

“Not sure where I’m headed,”he mutters. “Opening up into kind of a central space, I think there are a couple hallways headed back behind me.”

 

“You sure you’re gonna be able to find your way back out?”

 

“Yeah, trying not to think about that right now. Hey, there’s light in here,”he says, mostly to himself. “It’s not bright. Not sure about the source. It’s just I can see now.”

 

“What are you looking at?”

 

“Bunch of computers. Control panels. You know, I thought it would look weirder, but it doesn’t.”He picks a panel at random - they’re all identical - and taps the screen. The windows shift and exchange sizes, move around, but he can’t make heads or tails of it. “Reminds me a bit of the OS we had on the Normandy. I can’t figure out how to use it, though. There’s text written here, but I can’t make it out.”

 

The Normandy.

 

Kaidan narrows his eyes, assault rifle at his chin again. The Normandy. It’s just like being on the Normandy. The first one. The light’s the same level, same tone. And the panel’s his. Looks half-formed, indistinct, the way you see something familiar, you don’t notice the screws and the seams anymore. But the shape is right, the color is right. And the text - you can’t read in dreams, can you?

 

Something else, too. There was a feeling walking its fingertips up the back of his neck. The way he’d hear someone on the stairs and somehow know it was him and that he was looking for him. He could feel it on instinct. Pick up on some remote difference in the speed and the tone of his footsteps. And he’d keep his eyes lowered until Shepard was beside him, his gaze on him, and then, his heart beating fast -

 

Kaidan turned quickly. “Shepard?”

 

The hall is empty. Nothing but that orange glow and those placid blue-black walls. No lights to be seen. But if you’ve been living on a ship for so long, when do you ever notice the lights?

 

“Really?”he murmurs. “Screwing with my head and you don’t even have the decency to show me the one thing I want the most.”

 

“What the hell is going on?”Jack snaps. “Is it him? What did you find?”

 

“Nothing. Not yet. It’s in my mind. It’s showing me things. I don’t know why. It’s either taunting me, or …it’s trying to communicate.”Kaidan pops the heat sink, checks it for the hundredth time, slides it back into the gun with a grim click. “Haven’t decided yet. I don’t like it either way. The things I remember are mine.”

 

He runs his fingers across the monitor, scattering data over the interface the way one disturbs light on the surface of water. He mutes the comm for a moment, whispering,

 

“And if you took him, Reaper, and you’re showing this to me, pulling parts of him out like a trophy - there’s gonna be a reckoning. I _will_ watch you burn.”

===

Jack is bored. Jack is bored, pissed off, and mentally calculating all the work she could be doing if she wasn’t babysitting a thirty-five-year-old Spectre at the behest of her least favorite person in the galaxy.

 

But there’s something going on here that she doesn’t like, and she’s not going to find out the truth in an Alliance classroom. Maybe she’d catch a hint of it five months later on an extranet newstream, heavily edited and written for maximum political digestibility. Better just to find it here, in a cramped green room and the smell of grease and dirt and rot.

 

In close quarter fighting. Someone comes up here to make trouble there’s no room to maneuver.

 

Jack exhales hard. Rolls around in her spinny chair, trying to work off a fraction of nervous energy. Not doing shit puts her on edge.

 

There was a sound. A crackle. Wasn’t her chair. Never assume you didn’t hear what you heard, she tells her students, and if there’s one goddamn thing that’ll save their lives, it’s this. Use your instincts. Check your six. What you see, you can fight against. What you don’t will take you before you even know what happened.

 

Her eyes move over her surroundings like a hawk on the plain. Blue energy coursing down her wrists. Check the entrances. Where are your threats? The elevator. No. The Reaper. No. Her eyes flick to a sine wave underneath a century of dust, light green against green, a bare shadow.

 

Shit, the radio. This centuries-old equipment was coming to life.

 

" -- decrypting Cerberus channels. If you can hear me, please - "

 

Well, here comes trouble. Jack cheers up considerably.

 

Jack flips a switch that looks kind of relevant. "Hey. I know you from somewhere. You sound familiar."

 

"Jennifer? It's Dr. Liara T'soni."

 

Oh, how cute.

 

Jack's gone through enough names that she really doesn't care about this one, and she wants to laugh in Liara's face and maybe slap her around a little for pretending she has something she can lord over her. Maybe later. Right now she just knows Liara wouldn't be pulling out what she obviously thinks is a big gun if it isn't a total fucking emergency.

 

"Blue. Right. What do you want? Kinda in the middle of something here."

 

"I've managed to -- " The sound kept cutting in and out. They can put a man through a mass relay but still can't figure out how to send a radio wave through a couple hundred yards of dirt. " -- gave me access to Cerberus files related to the Crucible. One of its functions is to -- able to effectively absorb, translate, and transmit the personality matrix -- memories, impulses, emotions -- across the entire fleet. That Reaper is -- "

 

Shepard.

 

And suddenly, a whole lot of other things make sense.

 

"Miranda, you conniving little bitch," Jack whispers.

 

A lot of things happen at once. Jack knows, and she knows what she needs to do, and Liara, soldier that she was in her limited way, picks it up like the scent of a predator on the wind. Nothing needs to be said. It’s all instinct now.

 

That’s when the alarms go off. Music to her motherfucking ears. She feels that rush, a twinge between her legs.

 

"There!" says Liara, coming in much clearer. "I've got the blast doors open. There's a shuttle waiting for you. Hurry."

 

The fucking elevator’s down with Alenko.

 

No time to call it up. But there’s a little trick she learned. This is going to hurt tomorrow, she thinks. She jumps into the shaft, the split second of freefall thrilling her before she catches the cable, moving hand over hand up towards daylight, biotics vibrating in her muscles, moving just fast enough to look inhuman.

 

"Hurry!"

 

The blast doors.

 

Alarm sounding, deep red angry buzz, the door's got all kinds of overrides and is lumbering closed again - Jack's nostrils flare, she hauls off and bursts the door open with a powerful biotic blast, all thirty-two tons of it recoiling against her amp. Hitting something like that is like stopping a steel baseball bat with your brain. When she touches sunlight and concrete she sees the shuttle, already a foot off the ground and gaining, Liara bracing herself in the frame. Jack makes the jump easy, blue rivulets of energy coursing down her legs.

 

Liara grabs her hand and steadies her. The doors slide shut. The sudden silence makes Jack's ears pop.

 

"I just want you to know. Your last name is - "

 

" - Look, it's sweet you're trying to manipulate me, girlie, but I actually like Shepard. Save it for when there's something I really don't want to do."

 

"I just thought you'd like to know."

 

" I really don't give a fuck."

 

Her students called her Jack. Shepard did. Maybe a year ago she would have cared about her "real" name. Right now? What she has is pretty much good enough.

 

"Then I envy you."

 

Jack touches her comm. Still working. Miranda's dead silent. Probably doesn't want to admit she's been had, Jack thinks gleefully.

 

"Hey, boy toy. Let Shepard know I'm clear."

 

“What?”

 

There’s a long pause. A second too long. And then, tentatively: “Shepard …I …Jack says she’s clear.”

 

It's glorious watching it burst out of the ground, all two miles of it arching up towards deep space, a true colossus, churning earth and steel and concrete like chum in the water. The missile silo collapses like a chrysalis.

 

It would have killed Jack if she were still in there. And it was Kaidan that he wanted, it was always Kaidan, but Shepard never would have risked her death.

 

She matters.

 

"Godspeed out there, you crazy bastard," Jack says to the stars.

 

==

 

It was thirteen minutes before anyone spoke. They were some of the longest minutes of Kaidan Alenko’s life. He stays in cover behind the console, the amp at the back of his neck pressing into metal, his gun ready. For all the good it’ll do him. He doesn’t think. He waits. He waits. He waits.

 

Then, Miranda:

 

“I’m not going to kill you, Kaidan.”She sounds faintly irritated. Like, who would think that, she only has the detonator in her hands.

 

She also has the tone of voice of someone who’s spent the last several minutes trying to compose themselves.

 

“I’m not sure when you found out,”she says, very slowly and very deliberately. “And I don’t know what you and that - “A crisp pause. “What you and that Jack had planned, but by now I’m sure you know what the Crucible did to the Reaper fleet and to Shepard.”

 

“Why am I here, Miranda?”Kaidan asks. His voice is flat.

 

“He wanted you, Alenko. Whatever he’s doing, he wanted you to come along for the ride. So we brought him here and we brought you to him. And we tried to do something to keep him here, where we we could have studied the ship, we could have - separated them. We could have brought him back.”

 

Kaidan feels a hot pain traveling up his throat and to his eyes. You took him, he thinks to the Reaper, you _took_ him. And he’s just too fucking tired for this now.

“I have an informant on the ship and for that I’m grateful. Whatever Shepard, or the Reaper, or whatever the hell he is now,” she says, “whatever he plans on doing, I want to be informed. I hope that whatever happens to you now is meaningful.”


	4. 4

Kaidan’s dreaming.

 

It’s Vancouver again. When he was young. The endless blue sky hitting the mirrored windows like a bullet, the glare of sunlight, the top unfathomable, he’s young and terrified and there is no safe space in the galaxy for him.

 

He brings a cigarette to his lips (someone else's half-used butt fished out of a storm drain, but the older kids hooked on smokes they can't afford showed him how to dry it), exhales the remains of someone else's life, someone's lacquered hand he won't hold, someone's lipstick that won't touch his cheek. He pictures a glamorous woman, twenty or thirty years older, a vid woman, a billboard woman, synth-furs and platinum, and he is filled with a hatred so grim and complete it feels like dirt in his veins. The sky has changed to twilight like a filter on a camera, the building's changed to soot-stained brick and the air is filled with smog.

 

"We got to do something," says the kid next to him. He's wearing a dirty grey hoodie - might have been white once - and Kaidan can’t make out his face.."I'm fuckin' starving, Johnny."

 

"Okay, okay," he says. "Let me think. Shit."

 

There's a food shortage this year. They have guards out back during restaurant hours, most places in the city now. For safety of the patrons, sure, they could bust right in there guns blazing and nobody feels like they have a Striker to their temple while choking down overpriced soup. A side effect of this is that they also guarded the trash. They're trying to starve us out, Johnny thought, first time he ever saw one, and he was right. Guards at the dumpsters, guards at the fruit-packing warehouse, too many cameras in the grocery stores. The kids who were too young to work for the gangs were disappearing. Like fleas. You put down flea dust on the carpet to kill the eggs, and if you get them all a whole generation of young criminals dies off.

 

He knows which of the guards take favors - from young girls, boys - and it fucking disgusts him. Never did it himself. Never. Someday, he thinks, someday he's gonna be in the Reds, and he'll remember their faces, come back and kill every last one of them. He imagined some snot-nosed kid with a tear-streaked face, sobbing, thanking him...

 

He feels helpless, naked and raw on this city street and there's some mechanism inside of him converting all his fear to anger. He grips the switchblade in his pocket as if holding on to the edge of a cliff. He spits around his cigarette. Paces in circles, his thin shoulders moving in his shirt like a prowling leopard's, working off nervous energy.

 

A stranger bangs into his shoulder and in his reverie it nearly startles him to tears, but it flips over to rage in milliseconds. He lashes out blindly, finds a necklace and grabs on with savage satisfaction, pulling her into an alleyway before he even realizes what he’s doing.

 

He’s young and not strong, the fat gone from what little muscle stays on his arms. It’s an older lady, some rich bitch in her forties, and she could have fought him, but she’s petrified. Shepard slams her against the wall, because he can’t think of anything else to do with her. The knife is in his hand. The hair is standing up on the back of his neck. Okay, Johnny, he thinks to himself, ride this out.

 

“Take off your jewelry.”

 

She nods, crying silently. Shepard glances up the alley, down it - his friend mouths, what are you doing and Shepard ignores him.

 

“And your purse. Your omni-tool,”he says, thinking quickly. Shit, she’s going to go straight for the cops. “Drop it on the ground.”

 

His friend moves the loot out of the way silently.

 

Shepard doesn’t know what to do now. He looks at her. Tries to keep his hate alive.

 

Synth-fur and platinum. Wearing it like a shield, showing everyone how important she is like it means shit out here in the real world.

 

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing here?”he whispers. “You think you’re better than me, huh? You know how many kids you could feed with your jacket? But you’re important. It’s important for you to look good. To feel good. To have what you want. You earned it, didn’t you? And you’re gonna go home and tell your whole family about this awful kid who roughed you up and took your stuff, and it’ll never once occur to you that it was him or me.”

 

“I don’t - “

 

“Shut the fuck up.”

 

“Johnny,”the boy interrupts.

 

“You shut up too.”

 

“John,”he hisses, and then Shepard hears it.

 

Sirens. Shit. Not for them, probably. But they’d pass here, and they wouldn’t be like the crowds who pretended there was no sound coming from the alley.

 

“Fuck it,”he hisses through gritted teeth and he plunges the knife home. Pulls it back bloody and tries not to puke when he feels it hitch. His eyes close tight, and he doesn’t see her face, and he doesn’t watch her fall. “Run!”

 

(“She’ll live,”he says later, after they fenced the goods and managed to find some quiet warm safe part of the world to split coffee and sandwiches. He says it like he’s stabbed loads of women before and knows how to simply disable them. The kid believes him. “And I was right, about everything I was telling her. You know? She’s got all this money - wandering around down here like she owns the place - fuck, she probably does. Some slum lord, doesn’t care that her rents haven’t had no heat in years. Kids getting sick, freezing to death. Starving. She’s got the knife in her hand every other damn day and all I did was make her see it.”

 

And the Reds find out about it. And they find him later. Smelled out a some real talent, a kid who wasn’t gonna lay down and take it, a kid who wasn’t gonna drift by the wayside, become a beggar or a whore. And suddenly he’s a big man, and a year passes. Maybe two.)

 

==

 

“You sure about this?”

 

Shepard wipes the handgun down with the tail of his shirt. It’s cleaner than he is, now.

 

“Jesus, that’s loaded,”says Finch, batting his hand away.

 

“Come on, fuck off - yeah, I’m sure.”He gives the gun to Finch. “You don’t have to do anything but cover me,”he says.

 

“Little Johnny Shepard,”says Finch, exhaling. “You’re vicious, you know that?”

 

“Sure,”he says, noncommittally. He sets up the rifle in silence. There’s the tripod, there’s the ring of heat tape around the scope, kill the glare best you can.

 

“I don’t know why we’re doing this.”

 

“They’re fuckin’pedos, Finch. Twelve-year-old fuckin’girls.”

 

“Yeah, so?”

 

“So someone has to watch out for these people.”

 

“What do you think we’re doing in the Reds? We take care of our guys, we take care of Tenth Street. You got enough to eat, you got a place to sleep. What do you care?”

 

“Yeah, well, every time I see those guys I get pissed off. And I got a gun. And I’m fucking bored.”Shepard looks down the barrel. Five of them. They’re changing shifts.

 

“Hey, I bet you could knock the cigarette out of that guy’s mouth,”says Finch, talking quickly. “You’re the best shot I ever knew, John. That would show ‘em, you know - somebody’s watching them and they shouldn’t fuck around.”

 

“I’m not gonna screw this up,”says Shepard.

 

“You don’t like, get off on this, do you?’

 

“I don’t know what that means,”he replies, coldly.

 

They’re a couple young guns on the sun-baked concrete, their bellies warm, tans on the backs of their necks. Cars beneath them hovering on the smog like it was solid ground, and if these guns were plastic it would be a childhood memory. Hazy and beautiful and right.

 

Bang.

 

==

 

The grate slams shut, grinding flakes of rust into Shepard’s face. The rope’s wrapped in the grate. Shepard’s wrists are tied together. He can’t see except the wall in front of him. Hears patrons talking, laughing, the clink of silverware above him. The basement stinks, that underground dirt smell, the clinical stench of frozen vegetables and the scent of used pork fat.

 

The wall. The wall. The wall. Shepard twists his slender body to the left and right, trying to see his surroundings.

 

“Fuck,”he whispers, and he’s surprised by his voice, how young and scared it sounds. He grits his teeth, bites down hard, don’t let them hear it or it’ll be worse for you.

 

Footsteps. Shepard twists his neck to the right, hard enough to hurt. And this is where the film burns off the reel, and somewhere, years later and a million miles into deep space, Kaidan is filled with a cold rage that brings the taste of metal to his mouth. It’s Vrynnus. And there’s Rahna. And there’s so many months of pain and degradation and rage, Kaidan feels the biotics jetting up his wrists and tearing the rope, ripping the grate from the wall, he turns to his captor with a howl and lashes out, kicks - and everything is dead and gone and fallen and he’s free -

 

When Kaidan wakes up he remembers that Shepard didn’t have biotics.


	5. 5

He’s got Shepard’s service record up on his omnitool.

 

Joined the Alliance on his eighteenth birthday, he reads, and there’s a faint memory back there which he knows isn’t his. “I kill bad guys,”he tells Anderson. “Just like you.”And Anderson gives him a blank look, there’s an embrace in his eyes, and a tired sigh, and guilt. Anderson, Kaidan knows, wanted to save him. But the Alliance wanted to use him, and they wanted it more. Tame him. Give him discipline, harness his anger, and point him in the right direction. If he breaks, take him out. If he doesn’t, well, you might make yourself a Spectre. Shepard on Torfan, and Kaidan knows without knowing that the batarian stronghold underground smelled like dirt and frozen food and maybe, somewhere, just a touch of rendered fat. He knows he saw the line of prisoners with their wrists bound with rope. And they used that. They did. That’s why he got the memorial flame, that’s why Anderson pushed for it, because the two of them knew, private and unspoken, that Shepard never got a chance to be good.

 

He was justice and vengeance and fear all at once. He was the perfect soldier. He was a song of war. He was the man who finally, after all those years, managed to smile, to get drunk, to lean over the table and kiss him.

 

“You’re exactly what I need right now,”he had said. Kadan remembers all of a sudden.

 

He shuts off the omnitool with a sigh. His head hurts and he’s groggy. He knows he should be starving right now - biotic metabolism - but curiously enough, he isn’t. Maybe the ship is taking care of that, somehow. He’s sort of grateful. If sleeping on the Reaper had felt weird, having a bowl of cereal would be about ten times worse. Might actually be the thing that drove him nuts.

 

When he had woken up there was a map on the screens, all of them. Some of the maps are blurred or warped, like the data on the screens had been when he first entered the ship, but he had managed to piece together on his omnitool what he figures is an accurate version. Kaidan couldn’t recognize it (he wasn’t exactly a cartographer), there wasn’t any relevant information already loaded to his omnitool, and he couldn’t access the extranet or Miranda and Jack. (What had happened to Jack? One more thing to worry about, but later.) They might be in a part of the galaxy that hadn’t repaired the communications relays just yet.

 

He wishes Shepard - the Reaper - had shown him the memory of coming up with whatever the hell plan it had, but no, it’s never that simple. Kaidan touches his amp. The shields must be screwing with whatever the Reaper is trying to say. Maybe he’d be able to communicate with the ship more directly if he turned it off, but if he was wrong, he’d be dead.

 

I wish you had told me, Shepard. I should have …

 

But there really wasn’t anything he could do. So long ago, all of it.

 

“Normandy to Major Alenko. Come in, Major Alenko. No? I guess you’re still busy getting eaten by a Reaper like the last three thousand times, but Liara says to keep trying. What? No, I’m not talking to him - wait, yes I am, listen: ‘Normandy, this is Major Alenko, I like Canada and not giving Joker a raise’…“

 

Kaidan taps his com. “I didn’t know you wanted one, Joker.”

 

“Kaidan! Jesus! You’re alive.”Now he sounds worried. Strange how Joker’s mind works, not letting him feel it until now. “We figured out your trajectory, picked you up just before you hit the mass relay. I nearly pissed myself flying in, that relay wasn’t working last time we checked …We’ve been following you all night but we didn’t hit an area with a functional comm array until around 0400. Couldn’t figure out why you didn’t pick up. Been trying every hour, on the hour.”

 

“Sorry, I was asleep.”

 

“..he says he was asleep. I just, I don’t know what to add to that.”

 

Kaidan hears Garrus in the background, no doubt making an incredibly appropriate comment, but he can’t quite make it out.

 

“Where’s Jack?”

 

There’s a couple seconds of jostling. Joker goes “ow!”

 

“Right here, boy toy. Liara’s gonna show me that radio trick - never mind, I’ll explain it to you later. Listen, EVERYBODY back on Earth is freaking out. It’s hilarious. The Alliance wanted to send the whole goddamn fleet after you. We managed to talk them down to just the one.”

 

“I have a map. I’m sending it to the ship. Tell me what I’m looking at.”

 

There’s a pause.

 

“Liara? EDI? Anyone?”

 

It’s Liara who speaks.

 

“Kaidan, this is the Parnitha System. The Reaper is heading towards Thessia.”

 

 

=

 

They were all in the war room. It had taken Kaidan a while to decide whether he should disembark, but they knew where the Reaper is headed, and if they could figure out what it wants, well, it would cause much less of an incident than if a Reaper capital ship decided to park itself on Thessia, of all places.

“Is there any reason why the Reaper fleet would be interested in Thessia?”he asks.

 

“I don’t know,”says Liara. “Shepard …felt guilty about the fall, during the war. Maybe he’s gone there to right a wrong.”

 

“We don’t know for certain how much of that Reaper is still Shepard, Liara.”

 

“You’ve seen the data. I helped build the Crucible. I understand what it does. Have faith in him, Kaidan. At least this one time.”

 

Kaidan knows he’s being manipulated. Liara still isn’t very good at it, but Kaidan’s an easy sell.

 

“Fine. So Shepard wants to go to Thessia. Why now?”

 

“They’ve reopened the mass relay just two weeks ago. It’s the first time Thessia’s had contact with the rest of the galaxy since the end of the war.”

 

“What’s the situation on the ground?”

 

“Thessia’s held together remarkably well,”she says, a touch of pride in her voice. “But everyone’s interested in getting off the planet, to find relatives and friends, to discover what’s happened to the rest of the galaxy. There’s been more applications to leave the planet in the past week then there have been in the last thirty years combined.”

 

“You need permission to leave Thessia,”says Kaidan.

 

“Well, yes. Travel among the asari is tightly controlled because of smuggling.”

 

You’re lying, thinks Kaidan, and the anger he thinks it with isn’t his.

 

“Doesn’t everyone want to leave Thessia in the maiden stage?”

 

“It’s just not possible for everyone.”

 

“What kind of applicants are denied?”

 

“If the powers that be have reason to assume that the applicant is a smuggler, or in contact with smugglers …“Liara says, carefully.

 

“So, poor people.”

 

“We’ve virtually eliminated poverty on Thessia.”

 

Kaidan rubs his face. “Please. This isn’t an interrogation, it’s off the books, and anything you tell me now might save lives. I don’t want the travel brochure.”

 

“None of this common knowledge outside our race. Even on Thessia it’s not common knowledge outside of the political arena. I didn’t learn the whole of it until I began working as an information broker. And I don’t agree with all of it.”Liara adds, wistfully: “When I was younger I was just an archaeologist. I had the privilege of ignoring it.”

 

“No one’s judging you here. Go on.”

 

“The asari have a reputation to uphold. Thessia is considered the apex of democracy, a symbol of cooperation and prosperity. Our republics are supposed to be ideal for all of the galaxy to look towards. And for the most part, they are.“

 

“What about the ones that aren’t?”

 

“Some of them are politically unstable. Some of them aren’t as rich in natural resources or prosperous in trade. Some of them do not uphold the same standard of human rights as the rest of our planet. And we simply …wish to deal with them privately. It’s not a matter for the eyes of turians or salarians. Or humans. So natives of particular principalities are effectively banned from off-world travel. There are exceptions to every rule, but this is extremely uncommon.”

 

“So let me get this straight. Your people don’t let the other species know the asari haven’t really figured out how to solve poverty and warfare because otherwise they wouldn’t listen to a damn word you say. You’re oppressing all these people in the name of propaganda.”

 

“I …in so many words, yes. Even if you have the money and influence for internal travel it’s difficult to overcome the stigma. Especially because so many of these asari are pureblooded.”

 

Kaidan sighs. “Liara, this is huge.”

 

“Humans think that realpolitik began the second they showed up on the intergalactic stage. Do you know what happens when spacefaring races meet as equals, Kaidan? War. There needs to be a unifying force, a beacon, an ideal that’s strong and bright enough to be worth submitting to. Don’t judge the asari for everything we’ve done to keep the peace.“

 

“Shepard did more than any of you ever will.”

 

“I know that! And that’s why we have to bring him back!”

 

“Don’t drag him into this. You know where he came from. If it were up to the asari he’d still be starving in the streets.“

 

Silence.

 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t make the galaxy work this way. I didn’t choose it. I don’t want to be held responsible for the sins of my race.”

 

“Okay,”says Kaidan quietly. “I know it’s not your fault. I’m sorry, too.”

 

Liara folds her hands on her lap. “I don’t know what Shepard’s intending to do. Whatever happens now, it’s going to cause an incident and it may well be a violent one.”

 

“Well, they didn’t make him a Spectre because of his subtlety.”

 

Liara gives him a little smile. “I liked that about him too.”

 

“Listen, we need a game plan. What are the odds they’ll let a human Spectre into one of the restricted republics?”

 

“Slim to none. Don’t bother asking,”says Liara, catching on. “They’ll find out what we’re there for. Send a ground team into the capital and let me handle the rest.”


	6. 6

Thessia does look good. Good enough to make Kaidan wonder if they had dropped him down in some Potemkin village.

 

The three of them (James, Garrus, and himself) had been swamped by wide-eyed authorities of various stripes, all of them trying to get information about the Reaper. The asari on the homeworld hadn’t had the benefit of one year’s uneasy truce and Kaidan felt it was mostly a matter of luck they hadn’t decided to fire on the capital ship the second it was visible in the system. Kaidan had had to come up with about forty different ways to say “it’s classified.”

 

Well, now the questions were more extremely polite ways of asking what they thought they were doing here. It had been an hour. Maybe two. James is climbing the walls. (Literally. He’s spent the past fifteen minutes seeing how high he can jump and plant both boots on a two-thousand-year-old fresco.)

 

“Please don’t do that in front of the diplomats,”says Kaidan absently.

 

“Hey, BT,”he says. “You really think Doc’s gonna come through for us?”

 

“I do. Also, I see you’ve been talking to Jack.”

 

“She’s got a great sense of humor,”he says, almost shyly. “You think I should ask her out?”

 

“Um …not really.”  
“I know this isn’t about fraternization. Because I’m telling you, the extranet is like one percent pictures of you and the commander. They got a word for that where I come from: hipocresía.”

 

“Can I ask how you even know that?”

 

“Well, Sparks was on this mailing list - “

 

“What Kaidan’s trying to say,”Garrus interjects smoothly, “is that you shouldn’t stick anything in Jack you aren’t prepared to lose.”

 

Kaidan wonders briefly if he should looks at him, say something - gosh, Garrus, Tali's suicide must have been hard on you - but thinks better of it.

 

“All I’m hearing from you two is I’m the only one man enough on the Normandy for her. Fine by me, no competition.”

 

A Mako - of all things - screeched to a halt in front of them. Actually, screech is an understatement. Kaidan’s never heard anything make quite that noise. He also isn’t sure he understands turning completely parallel to stop on a quiet city street.

 

It reminds him of Shepard, and he fights back the swell of pain and confusion. The mission comes first. Not now.

 

The Mako opens. A surprisingly young-looking asari, maybe forty or fifty at most (not that he’s a great judge) scowls at them from the driver’s seat. She’s obviously poorer, swimming in her clothes, a patchwork jean jacket three sizes too big. Her hair (head scalp thing? Kaidan wonders if it would be at all appropriate to ask. Maybe he’ll search it on the extranet when the mission is over) is tinted slightly red. Kaidan had never seen that on an asari before.

 

“This is blackmail,”she says, by way of greeting. Ah. Liara.

 

“This car has brakes, right?”Kaidan asks.

 

The asari ignores him. “Pile in. I ain’t got all day.”

 

They manage to cram themselves in between a collection of boxes filled with something that makes a metallic clank. Cardboard. The asari have cardboard, he realizes. Amazing how small the galaxy really is. It’s all in the details.

 

“I was supposed to drop these off tonight,”says the asari petulantly. “I don’t think I can show up at the rendezvous point with a Spectre, a turian, and a …you …and not get into any trouble.”

 

“I’m an N7!”James protests.

 

“I’m sure I know what that is.”

 

Garrus laughs. The girl gives him an appraising look in the review mirror.

 

“Hey. Turian. Wanna make a buck? I know somebody who got a huge shipment of GastroLites just before the war. Obviously she can’t move ‘em. Supposed to improve your metabolism by 300 percent.”

 

“Sorry, I’m broke. Also happy with my current brand of gizzard stones, thank you.”

 

The asari is a new smuggler, Kaidan realizes. Trying to fence to people she’s barely met. Using spy-vid phrases like “rendezvous point.”She’s going to get caught someday soon if she doesn’t grow up fast, and not by someone as benign as the latest Shadow Broker.

 

He doesn’t wonder how he knows this. Someone else’s instincts were taking over.

 

“What’s in the boxes?”he asks.

 

“Among other things? Serrice Council Amps.”

 

“Bullshit. Those are custom.”

 

James and Garrus both give him strange looks. Garrus looks worried. James just seems sort of impressed.

 

“I have three. The rest are Armali, but still pretty good. And any kind of amp is tough to get in Epiria.”

 

Kaidan resists the urge to touch the amp in his port. Amazing how easy it is to forget you’re walking around with a bomb in your head. Believe it or not, it was the least pressing of his concerns.

 

They had left the city limits and were in what appeared to be some sort of forest, an unpaved trail. It’s getting dark. The asari flicks the lights on, but dimly.

 

“What’s your name, anyway?”Kaidan asks. Maybe the flow of topic was what set her off. Maybe it just wasn’t the kind of question you’re supposed to ask. Either way, the mood in the car dropped about five degrees.

 

“Tiana,”she says. “Tiana Kodellas.”

 

Tiana spent a long time zig-zagging, doubling back, and going offroad (often taking particularly unhealthy paths. They nearly went straight up a cliff at one point) but by Kaidan’s estimation there couldn’t have been more than a mile of forest between the border and another city. Kaidan spent some time looking at the uniformity of the plant life and wondering if it was artificial. There was something poetic about a forest border. Poetic, and good at hiding unpleasantries like checkpoints and border patrol. The flow of traffic in Thessia’s capital city seems designed to cleverly tuck away the practical, to move trade and shipments along lines far away from the intellectual and social center of the city. God forbid the ivory tower has to see the asari equivalent of a truck driver. Not a surprise they have problems with smuggling, you’re almost inviting it with this design.

 

The forest almost immediately converged in on the traffic of a squat, brown, crowded, entirely unpleasant city, quick enough to make Kaidan’s head spin. This was definitely not the privileged part of Thessia. Most of the buildings were scorched. The invasion had hit it hard. Women and girls lived in buildings cracked open to the sky like eggs, Kaidan looked inside and saw their laundry strung from one brick half-wall to the next. In one apartment the residents had made an ersatz ceiling with corrugated steel and nails, what looked like an old blanket covered up the hole in the wall.

 

“That’s the hospital,”said Tiana, seeing him looking at it.

 

They drive around for a little bit. Tiana’s silent.

 

“So what do you think?”she says, her high, clear voice not matching the bitterness in her words. “This is the first time a turian or a human has seen Epiria in …I don’t know how long. Since before I was born.”

 

“What happened here?”asks Kaidan.

 

“Eezo mines ran out,”says Tiana, shortly. “Not right away. But there were other problems. I think we pissed off a few trade partners, or something. Or they dropped us, started pulling out all the investments decades before the mines went low. There might have been a war. Epiria used to be rich. Those mines were ancient. But we didn’t ever spread our territory, look for other resources ... I dunno. Didn’t really stay in school.”

 

(She says it a touch quickly. Kaidan gets the feeling she knows more about Epiria’s history than she’s willing to admit, and the problem here is mainly that book learning isn’t cool.)

 

“I’m sorry,”says Kaidan.

 

“Don’t be. Hey, is there any particular place you want to go, or were you hoping for anywhere in the whole republic?”

 

“Um,”says Kaidan. “Is this the capital?”

 

“Believe it or not.”

 

“Then here is fine.”

 

Kaidan hopes they’re about where they’re supposed to be. Give me a sign, Shepard.

 

Tiana halts the Mako. “Just keep your guns out. Look, people are staring.”She laughs. “Bet you won’t last five minutes.”She gives Kaidan an impish smile.

 

“I’m glad you find our imminent demise amusing,”says Garrus.

 

“Can I get a tip?”

 

“You’re pushing it, bonita.”

 

Tiana makes a rude gesture. “Don’t call me that. Makes me sound like a girl.”

 

Kaidan makes a mental note to write a feminist letter to whoever manufactures the Alliance translators. At very least, for the sake of coherency.

 

“One last thing,”she says to Kaidan, dropping her voice. “If you really want to know what happened to Epiria, find my friend Shula. She’s at the library - you’ll know it when you see it - tell her Tiana sent you.”

 

The Mako wails off into the night. Wailing. Wailing is an understatement.

 

“Those things were not meant for city streets,”James comments.

 

Kaidan watches the Mako disappear. “Archangel,”he says.

 

Garrus snaps to attention. “Sir.”

 

“Do what you can to tail her and the amps, but don’t take unnecessary risks. If it’s between her and the shipment, favor the shipment. Vega, you’re coming with me. We’re gonna find that library.”


	7. 7

Kaidan does recognize the library when he sees it. It’s a breath of fresh air in the crowded city, the architecture similar to the kind he had seen in the better parts of Thessia - light, low, and airy. The natives seemed to avoid it (come to think of it, maybe they were avoiding the humans).

 

Kaidan and James cross the courtyard. Open space makes the hair on the back of Kaidan’s neck stand up. Same with a lot of Marines. No cover.

 

Which reminds him.

 

“Garrus. Status report.”

 

“Well. I’m not sure if you noticed, but it’s hard for space aliens to blend in with the crowd. Even harder if they’re trailing a vehicle on foot. At least all those high-rise buildings would make great vantage points if the asari had only bothered building them.”

 

“Sorry. Worth a shot.”

 

“What do you mean, worth a shot? I lost the girl, but I’m staring at the factory she left the shipment at right now.”

 

“Good job, Garrus. Let me know if anything happens.”

 

He switches lines.

 

“Liara,”he says. “I need you to do something for me. Do you have records of amps sold by the Serrice Council?”

 

The comm hums to life. “Of course.”

 

“I need you to trace any that might have come to Thessia, especially recently. We’re looking for three that’ve shown up on the black market.”

 

Liara’s quiet for a moment. Then: “The day after communications from Thessia resumed an order for three amps was put in by a single person. It’s unusual. My computer flagged it. They would have been delivered today.”

 

Great, more problems.

 

“Thanks, Liara. Can you tell me who made the order?”

 

“I’m afraid it was Justicar Samara.”

 

Samara.

 

Kaidan sets his jaw. Even with the two of them - three of them - he didn't like the odds of beating an asari justicar. And even if they could take one down, it would not be this one. Kaidan's met her. Seen what she can do. Outsmart her? Sure, he could try. To the extent that he'd win a battle of wits against a woman nine hundred years older than he is, on her home planet, when he doesn't even know her half of the game. The only solution is, maybe, to outrun her.

 

"When's the pickup?"

 

"It was a couple of hours ago. 0400 at company headquarters in the capital."

 

So she's in the next city over, she's been here longer than he has, and she's looking for a thief.

 

"There aren't any loopholes in the code favoring smugglers, are there?"

 

"I don't think so."

 

"This was an obvious plant. They'll have been watching out for whoever intercepted the shipment."

 

"I agree. Garrus - are you sure you can't find Tiana?"

 

"Vanished without a trace."

 

"Okay. Watch the shipment, but be careful. Whatever you do, don't fire on anyone except in unmistakable self-defense. If a fight breaks out down there, don't take sides."

 

"Really? I was thinking I'd take a couple pot shots at the dealers. Do my part to clean up Thessia."

 

"We think Justicar Samara's after the smugglers."

 

The weight of that is not lost on Garrus.

 

"You've got a choice between pissing off a thousand-year-old asari commando bound to a black and white moral code and a Reaper capital ship who may or may not be the most unstoppable man in galactic history. You've only slept with one of them. Choose wisely, Major."

 

Images shoot through Kaidan's brain like a hot bullet through flesh.

 

A pale asari, little waif, wearing her dirty sweater large as a dress. Her eyes are green and wide and filled like a pool with pain and fear. Her cheek on the plaster, asleep without a bed. Her fingertips on the book. A blue sky. Every part of Tiana loves her, wants to take her hand and squeeze her fingers hard enough to break. Hold her like she could drive the pain out of her and into herself. Hold her like she could make her believe. And she would do all that if she could, and she would fence goods that even she knows she shouldn’t get her hands on, it’s worth the risk, while the gates are open and half the homeworld comes pouring out. If they had enough money they could grease the right palms. They could slip through the right crack. He remembers the two of them curled up like dogs afraid of freezing in the dark night, and in the silence and the weight of each other’s presence they do know that there must be a heaven, and that it cannot be here.

 

Shepard with his stomach on the concrete, rifle to his eye, sun on his face, waiting for the cloud to pass over the sun. ‘Hey, Finch. You ever think about getting out of here?’

 

The images end as suddenly as they began.

 

Kaidan's holding his head in his hands. James is keeping him upright.

 

"You got one of those L2 migraines, huh?" says James, in a tone of voice he probably thinks is encouraging.

 

He’s indoctrinated. The thought is cold and heavy in his mind. He’s already out there on some crazy mission, leading half his crew into danger, possibly sending the whole planet off its metaphorical axis. What comes next?

 

How do you know this, Shepard?

 

"Something like that. I'll be fine."

 

He takes a deep breath, opens the comm, picks up where he left off.

 

"Liara, you and EDI take a shuttle to Serrice Council HQ. Find out where the justicar is now. Beat it out of them if you have to. I’ve made my choice.”


	8. 8

There’s no one in the library. There’s dust, and that’s all. The shelves are mostly intact. Some of the furniture is still there. Kaidan would have expected graffiti, damage. Something about the place seemed holy to the asari, even these, who had the most reason to be angry with the world, who had the most reason not to care. Maybe there’s some grain of truth in that image they like to project, Kaidan thinks.

 

There’s a stained glass window in the center of the building, colored light filtered through the haze of age of neglect, illuminating a lecture hall. The room was bare and sonorous, had something resembling a stage, a part of the floor uplifted by two slim marble steps, raising the pedestal by no more than six inches. The speakers here would have been either matriarchs or symbolic ones - traditionally, the audience would have sat close to the speaker, on the floor, gathered around her feet like children.

 

There are books spread out here, the only ones Kaidan’s seen on the floor, except for the volumes that fell when bookshelves decayed and collapsed. They were left here like offerings, like totems, like guardians. They’re all open to pictures. Blue skies. Green grass. White cities. Kaidan wonders if anyone else besides this stranger, this reader - Shula, he knows that it’s Shula, this place feels like her and the love for her he had known - knows that they’re supposed to miss a shade of green that they had never seen.

 

James is calling for Shula.

 

“She’s not here, James,”says Kaidan, touching his arm. “Let’s go.”

 

If they had walked just twenty yards to the east, they would have found the part of the building where every word spoken in the courtyard echoes into the library. They may even have seen a little figure hurrying away.


	9. 9

Garrus Vakarian is not an architecture major. He thinks of buildings in terms of tactical viability - can he see from here, and can they see him? - and, well, how fun they are to fight through. (He would have loved the library, if only they had time for tourism.)

 

So he watches the doors. The windows. The streets. He doesn’t let his mind wander like Kaidan might have, watching the flow of traffic, trying to figure out its intention and shape. Normally, this concentration makes him the better sniper. This time, it meant it hardly occurred to him that several important things were happening while he was minding the situation above ground.

 

And daydreaming a bit of a garden planet where he and Shepard and Williams had found a cliffside overlooking a geth encampment and spent the better part of an afternoon picking them off from a good 500 yards - Williams had even offered to go back for beer. Where was that, anyway? Might have been Casbin.

 

There were underground tunnels. A crucial part of the ancient Thessian sewer system had crossed through this part of the city, and the untouchable class that repaired them moved underground to do so. Shula knows them, had learned it in a book, had figured how the antiquated building they were using as a warehouse connected to the tunnels, and this all had something to do with how she and Tiana got started in smuggling to begin with. (But this was a story Garrus Vakarian would never learn.)

 

He does, however, see the two little figures appear at the window almost instantly. (‘Get down,’Tiana mouths.) When she breaks out the rifle, Garrus is hardly impressed. Her timing’s all off, setting up the rifle in the window when she must know she’s being watched. All that movement, visible target. She finds him quicker than most, aims at what is reasonably close to his forehead, but Garrus knows that if she was going to pull the trigger she would have by now.

 

Of course, he wouldn’t have given her the chance.

 

“Major,”he says, “We have kind of a situation here. Tiana thinks she’s got me pinned down.”

 

“What? Why?”

 

“That’s because she does. Don’t worry, I’m in cover and I don’t think she’d be able to hit me even if I wasn’t. All the same, I would rather not lay here with a gun pointed at my head. It’s just not my preference.”

 

“She’s back at the warehouse?”Shit. This is the last safe place in the galaxy for her. “What’s going on?”

 

“I don’t know. Maybe you ought to come here and work it out.”

 

Then:

 

Garrus stiffens. “Someone’s coming.”


	10. 10

“Liara? Can you come up to your quarters, please?”

 

EDI, being more or less the Normandy in her all her glory, had heard every word Kaidan had said to Liara. Liara is not happy about having to go fetch her. She tells Cortez to hang on (Cortez looks about as happy as she does), gets in the elevator, and after half a crucial minute finds the wayward AI just outside her quarters.

 

“EDI, Kaidan’s radioed us. He wants in the shuttle, right now.”

 

“I’m busy,”EDI replies.

 

“I’m sorry, I’m not sure that’s physically possible.”

 

EDI pauses for a moment. “There. I apologize for the interruption. If you’ll entertain the suggestion of mutiny, I have a better plan.”

 

“What?”

 

“As the Shadow Broker, you have access to the Serrice Council’s security records.”

 

“I do.”

 

Liara steps inside her office, keying them up before EDI can even speak again.

 

“Show the security vids, beginning at 0400 hours.”

 

Liara does. Her eyes flash when she sees it.

 

“That’s not Samara.”

 

“I thought not. I believe it wouldn’t have occurred to the Major, who is unfamiliar with asari culture and hadn’t been here to serve with the justicar. A moment ago I read the Code. I was scanning for what a human would call ‘entrapment.’I’m going to send the justicar a message explaining all of this. Please wait.”

 

Not thirty seconds later, Liara’s monitor switches on.

 

“I knew something strange was going on. They - the Reapers - began the repairs on the nearest relay. Lessus is distant. Unimportant.”She and EDI exchange a look Liara jealously remembers, the look between two intelligent people whose minds are working faster than their mouths, but perfectly in synch. “Do you really think Shepard is behind this?”

 

“I do,”EDI replies.

 

“EDI of the Normandy,”Samara begins. “By the code I will serve you. Your choices are my choices. Your morals are my morals …“


	11. 11

Detective Aradith Delfina hadn’t thought it would be this easy.

 

It’s common practice among Thessian law enforcement. You let a few goods slip into the black markets at opportune times and then you simply …follow them. You want it to be something so good that either only the pros will touch it, or only the complete amateurs. You cull a few amateurs, saves you some real work somewhere down the line. But of course, you couldn’t do it everywhere all of the time. The best thing to do was wait for just the right moment. Whenever “travel season”starts up - an informal term they use in her profession for any period of time where people have reason to try and move offworld illicitly - the trap gets sweeter. The mass relay powering back on - well, Delfina knew she could make a good catch. It was her technique, she was well-known for it, and no one in her department expected her to sit on her ass while the first applications offworld got processed.

 

Unfortunately, the Serrice Council had figured out what she was doing and shut down her account. Didn’t want their goods associated with the black market, no matter how tenuously. Delfina had tried to point out that the whole point of the exercise was that nobody would ever think you could get their goods illegally, but it hadn’t gone over particularly well. She lost a lot of face at the office that day. But she had worked something out, “borrowed”the name of another client. The client was a justicar - terrifying in concept, certainly, but hardly any risk, she had been on Lessus when the war ended, of all places, and who knows when she’s going to get relay access on her planet again?

 

Of course Delfina knows about the underground tunnels.

 

Tiana picks up on the interloper the same way Garrus does. She can hear the sounds of the city, footsteps and movement all around her - even a few girls hanging around the warehouse, other smugglers or even legitimate workers lingering like fixtures of the building, aspects of the plumbing or motes caught in a sunbeam - but the ones she hears are different. The way this one walks is off. The people here move with an aimless, nervous energy. They move just to burn the day off. Whoever this newcomer is, she has something to do.

 

When Tiana realizes the footsteps are coming from the tunnels, her suspicions are only confirmed.

 

Tiana pulls the rifle away from Garrus, banging the barrel on the window. Shula looks to her with her dinner plate eyes.

 

“There’s a weirdo. It’s probably that Spectre. Stay quiet.”

 

Shula reaches for her hand, not realizing that Tiana keeping all her fingers wrapped around her gun is a greater show of love than anything else could ever be.

 

==

 

“I got sensors locking onto the Normandy from all over the surface. You know how the asari watch us. I can dodge some of them, but it only takes one. I think if an Alliance shuttle gets caught trying to land in one of these restricted republics we’re going to get shot down,”Cortez says. “I’ll land if my orders stand, take you and Liara and EDI down.”

 

“It won’t be necessary to risk them. I’ll land using my own ship and handle this situation myself.”

 

“I’ll give you the Major’s coordinates.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

The query comes in soon enough.

 

“Ground control, this is justicar Samara. I have a problem on Epiria and need immediate clearance to land, please.”

 

“Is this about the Spectre?”

 

“No.”

 

The voice is young and naive and not used to dancing around the questions they should ask. Sometimes a question reveals more about you than you’d like it to. Shame Samara can’t lie, save everyone the trouble.

 

“I’m sorry, Justicar. We have reason to believe there’s been a security breach. We’re on lockdown.”

 

“I’m sure you know the consequences of impeding me.”

 

Whoever’s at the other end stays silent, grows too clever to point out that there’s a waiting period she must observe, after which the breach might well be lifted, there are many ground control centers on Thessia and Samara can’t hurt the ones that aren’t refusing her, and if she tries to land in Epiria anyway they’ll shoot her shuttle down and be correct in doing so.

 

Strange to be in a position of power over a justicar. Wise not to speak of it.

 

Samara takes a breath, closing her eyes.

 

Shepard.

 

I know more about you than perhaps you yourself do. I know things kept unspoken (and by now, perhaps, so do the ones closest to you). I know how close you came to killing me and sparing my daughter. I know how badly you wanted to believe in the principle of freedom and self-actuality, that everyone in the galaxy deserves the chance to be the best possible person they could be. Even you. Even me. I admired it. I admired it although I do not agree. Cannot. If you can hear me, I want you to know one thing - that I believe in you.

 

I need a distraction.

 

==

 

A lot of things happen at once.

 

A red ray screams down from the sky, burning ozone, electrifying the air of Epiria with an otherworldly hum. It hits its target and so many centuries of concrete and stone are sloughed away like water. It drags itself across the city street like an infant dragging its finger through the water.

 

Kaidan and James reach the warehouse at the same time Delfina does. And Samara reaches the warehouse at the same time they do.

 

Garrus has to make a call. He takes the shot.

 

The bullet bounces off Samara’s barrier harmlessly. She glances in his direction, distractedly.

 

The entire Thessian fleet, which has had its sights trained on the Reaper the second it hit low orbit, fires.

 

“Shepard!”Kaidan shouts. “Stop!”

 

The beam, miraculously, does.

 

Tiana pushes Shula to the ground, whips her rifle, absurdly, around to the woman at the other end of a small room. She aims - she chokes. Just like with the turian. She can’t take the shot.

 

He’s got to buy time. James sends a lift grenade flying through the warehouse window, fuckin’nails it. “Go, loco!”he yells.

 

Kaidan runs for the door.

 

Samara leaps from her shuttle, biotics burning around her.

 

Garrus aims. Can’t take the shot, she’s flying too fast. He’ll have to lay there and watch his team die.

 

There’s fire raining down from the sky.

 

Delfina recovers before the girls do, and in a crucial second their guns are all drawn again. Delfina doesn’t hesitate.

 

One milimeter before the trigger pulled the firing pin, Justicar Samara, of all the fucking people, appears at the broken window, and Delfina believes in ghosts and hell again.

 

Samara sends her flying. She hits the wall with a sickening crack. Tiana hears it and something inside her, the sound of the hunt, lets her raise her gun -

 

Kaidan finds them. “Tiana. Don’t.”

 

Everything stops.

 

“I’m here to help you. I promise.”

 

“Screw you. I don’t believe you.”

 

“Don’t let this happen. Once you’ve taken a life, the first time - no matter how just it was - it’ll weigh on you. You’ll be changed. People will look at you different. You’ll look at yourself different. You’ll remember how you enjoyed it. Do you want the one you love to spend the rest of her life believing that this is all you are?”

 

Tiana’s eyes dart to Shula.

 

Delfina spits blood. “You are all breaking intergalactic law.”

 

“I know,”says Kaidan. “I’m doing what’s right.”

 

“Be glad that there are people willing to take on that burden for you, my child,”says Samara to Tiana, tenderly. “Be grateful. You are free.”

 

Samara makes a fist. Kaidan will remember the sound of Delfina’s neck bones cracking for the rest of his life.

 

Tiana lowers her gun. Exhales hard.

 

Shula takes her hand.

 

==

 

Half the asari fleet takes off after the Reaper. After Shepard. The whole planet is waiting, with bated breath, for the answer to what they think is the most important question - have the Reaper wars begun again?

 

They don’t notice one lone ship out there in the dark, finding its way back home.


	12. 12

  
**Art by Trilliath**

 

Kaidan sits with the girls a while in the spaceport. They're all waiting for something, the three of them. For the afternoon to be over, maybe. Kaidan keeps his eyes vaguely on the horizon, the sun dipping into red. Shuttles skimming their way across the clouds. A small cruiser, here and there. No one looks at the two asari sprawled out sitting on the floor, Shula with her grey sweater down by her nails and Tiana in her patchwork jacket. They probably assume that he's their father.

 

"Well," he says. "You two kids be good, okay? Whole world out there for you now. Infinite possibilities. You can do anything. No reason for it to be trouble."

 

"Oh, I don't know. Can't promise nothing," says Tiana, lifting up her pretty pointed chin. Her grey eyes fierce as ever. "We're young. We're gonna do our fair share. Think we might be strippers for a while." (Shula looks up, eyes wide.) "That's what all the maidens do at some point. At least if you ask a human, huh?"

 

"I have the feeling I've just unleashed a monster," says Kaidan dryly.

 

"Really? Cause I have the same feeling too." She grins, hard. "Won't let you regret it. Promise." She raises her lack of eyebrows at Shula, who looks up from worrying her sweater.

 

"I promise too," she tells him, her voice strident and clear. More so than Kaidan had expected.

 

Kaidan grins at her. "I know your type, Shula. When you're a little bit older, little more confident, you'll be the one calling the shots. Going to have to be someone there to scrape Tiana off the floor."

 

"Screw you, Alenko."

 

"Language."

 

Tiana vaults herself up off the ground and Kaidan catches her automatically, turning his face just in time that the kiss lands on his cheek. Shula shoots him a look that could kill a varren.

 

"Oh, come on, Tiana. I'm too young for you."

 

"You're a wonderful woman, Kaidan Alenko." She furrows her brow. "Sorry, man. You are a man, right?"

 

"Um, I like to think that I am."

 

"We're gonna name our firstborn after you. You and Shepard."

 

"That's no name for a girl," Kaidan says, picking his jacket off the chair and swinging it over his shoulder. He doesn't turn to look behind him, doesn't want to see the parting in their eyes. "Tell you what. Call her Ashley."


	13. 13

Kaidan keeps the amp in.

 

“My god, you’re obedient. I could use five or six of you.”Miranda gives him a mysterious smile. “It won’t really go off when you take it out. Just psy-ops.”

 

“Do you ever want this back, or …? I’d rather leave it on until I’m sure I know I’m safe. I like that shielding.”Kaidan’s refused to go anywhere near the Citadel since it all happened. If they wanted him, they knew how to call up the Normandy.

 

“Oh, keep it. It seems lucky.”

 

“There’s one last question I believe you had for Spectre Alenko,”prompts the salarian councilor.

 

“I was in the Collector base. I saw them assembling a human Reaper. I saw them make - the most uncanny things. Husks out of burnt corpses. Is there any possibility, did you see anything inside that ship, that would suggest …?”

 

“Don’t,”says Kaidan, simply.

 

The hologram winks off.

 

“You’ve got a lot to answer for,”says the asari councilor.


	14. 14

Kaidan and the Normandy pursue the Reaper across the galaxy. They meet him again, in some dark corridor, the ship traveling so fast through dead space that Joker nearly misses him, has to turn on a scale of a thousand miles.

 

“We’ve ground up a lot of our fuel, Major,”says Joker. He meets Kaidan’s eyes.

 

“Wait as long as you can. Not a second longer. If I don’t come back, leave.”

 

“I …yes, sir.”

 

The Reaper is exactly the same as Kaidan had left it, and for the first time since leaving Thessia, Kaidan exhales. A great weight has been lifted from his back, and that tiredness takes him over again, the one that’s been hurting him for so long. Since Shepard’s first death, one man against the vacuum of space, dying out there in the shadow of a star.

 

There’s that light that comes from nowhere. There are the panels, all switched off like nighttime. There is the bed.

 

There is so much he doesn’t understand.

 

The rest of the world vanishing off into a bluish haze, and Kaidan's too tired now to argue. He drops his armor, his gun vanishing into the floor and he lays down in their marriage bed, calls up the old memory of Shepard in his arms. His back against him, the heat on his stomach, the shape of longing and refuge and regret. And when he feels it close and deeper than a memory, when he knows he's here, he switches off the amp and he says it:

 

"Show me."

 

***

**Art by Trilliath**

When he wakes up he can tell it's different this time. It's not like what he saw on the ship, the visions of data dulled by faulty neuron reception and the filters God put in to keep us all from going mad. No. It's a real place. He can hear waves in the distance and even more faintly, the sound of sea birds and the wind. Scent of linen, paint, and beach. A warm wind startles heavy curtains, the plastic tip to the cord knocks against the wall. Wherever he is, it is whole.

 

Kaidan opens his eyes.

 

He's in some kind of hotel room. Or the kind of place people refer to as a "villa." Wholesome and open, belonging to everyone, not stained with the past and colored by intrusion. The walls are stucco, coarse textured, and have recently been given a coat of white that's just slightly too thick. Kaidan rubs the pad of his thumb over a smooth clot of paint.

 

"This is amazing," he says aloud.

 

There's a balcony (the hazy ocean) and from the balcony a set of stairs. Whole building painted white just like the inside. Kaidan walks out onto the sand.

 

A figure on the beach, his back against the sun, strong and young. He turns, facing him, his eyes bright, his voice laughter - "Kaidan!"

 

"Shepard!"

 

Kaidan's breath seizes in his chest, his footsteps break into a run, and in a moment he's in his arms again.

 

This is what he wanted. This is all he’s ever wanted.

 

He pulls back just slightly, his eyes shut tight against the tears, their foreheads pressed together.

 

"Shepard..." he whispers, and he's surprised by the need in his voice, the desperation and the sorrow.

 

"Shh. It's all over now." Shepard's hands cupping his face, Kaidan clutching his arms, a kiss that brings his fear to the ground.

 

 

They watch each other for a while after, Kaidan taking in every line of his face, every tone in his blue eyes, the slight smile on his lips. Kaidan touches him, tentatively, his fingertips on the bridge of his nose. Shepard's eyes slide shut. Kaidan follows the line down over the curve of the tip, the dip of the philtrum, finds his smooth mouth. Shepard takes in a breath, his lips part. Kaidan kisses them almost on instinct, chaste somehow, soft and dry as a bed.

 

"Your hair grew out a little," Kaidan tells him, resting his palm on the back of Shepard's neck.

 

"I'm not a soldier anymore."

 

Kaidan nods. Shepard breaks away from him, his fingertips still at the small of his back.

 

"What is this place?"

 

"An old memory. From many different people. Not our people, an older species. And things I remember. Things you remember. Things I saw in a photograph or a vid." He squints out at the horizon, a look in his eyes Kaidan had never seen before, not on any human being.. "I saw so many couples here, making love in the sand. I saw a man kill his wife, he strangled her and left her body floating in the shore. Two women fell out of love. A tribe of them hunted here, they'd pass back and forth on the coast. It took generations. Decades. They left a woman behind the rocks there to give birth. The waves were the same, and the sand. I can't explain it to you, Kaidan. Hard for me to even remember what it's like, knowing this. I'm human again, at least right now. For you.”

 

Kaidan narrows his eyes against the light (but it doesn't hurt him, and he doesn't have to check to know his implants are gone). There's a figure out there in the shoals, a kid. Tan brown skin and skinny legs. He's playing with a model ship. He seems to sense the eyes on him and disappears, running with his head bowed low to wherever it is children run, when the need rises up in them so quickly.

 

"Is that ... ours?"

 

"It can be. If you want."

 

"Is all of this real? Is any of it?"

 

“I don't know," he says. "I can't describe it to you, what I did here. I'm capable of things that can never be understood."

 

“I ... I'm not sure what to say to you, Shepard.”

 

"You don't have to say anything. Stay."

 

Kaidan sleeps with him that night, riding him, his body rocking forward against Shepard's, pressing himself closer to him with each movement, Shepard's hands on him preventing him from falling back. Cupping his ass, the small of his back. It's how he remembers. It's real. It's human.

 

Kaidan half-asleep with his lips at the back of his neck, the fine hairs there, the taste of sweat, his palms moving across Shepard's shoulders. The warmth of his body against his stomach.

 

"You're wonderful," he whispers. "I never thought I would ever feel this again. I never thought I could have this twice."

 

***

 

He wakes in the middle of the night, calls Shepard’s name softly.

 

“I’m here.”

 

And he is here, the shape of him in his bed, the muscles of his body, that endless well of strength. Kaidan cups the back of his neck, finds it in the dark. His eyes are still closed, lids gummed shut with sleep, and Shepard’s body is warm against his.

 

“I’ll never let anything happen to you again,”Kaidan murmurs. It doesn’t mean anything, not in particular. How could it now? The man he loves is a god.

 

"I believe you,”Shepard tells him. It doesn’t mean anything either. His arm is low on Kaidan’s side, flush with their body heat, heavy with the weight of having been there all night. Kaidan falls back asleep without moving.

 

***

 

The sunrise, or what will eventually become the sunrise, is a hot red thread in the darkness. The line between sea and sky is still not clear. Kaidan finds Shepard on the balcony by touch and sense, his arm moving with the column of his waist. Shepard's head on his shoulder.

 

"I fucked up," Shepard whispers. "After all this time, I'm still making the same mistakes. The Quarian fleet. Torfan. Never got over it. Never got better. And people died because of that.."

 

"You did everything for us. You did your best. I'm sorry."

 

"I can't let this go on. I'm just one man. I don't know what would have happened if you hadn't stopped me on Thessia. I had that anger in me and it ... reverberated. It was like a seismic wave. A death knell."

 

"The voice of God."

 

"I thought if I got it all out of me, maybe. I put all the anger in me, all the memories, all the - love. Into that ship. I sent it away from the fleet, tried to make all of it go away, all the things that made me ... not right. No. It didn’t work. I can't have this power, Kaidan."

 

"No one can. We knew that. We always knew."

 

"I just thought I could make everything right. I couldn't pass up the chance that maybe this time I could just take everything and fix it. Isn't that what everyone wants to do? No war, no suffering. If there was even a chance I could make that happen I had to try."

 

"You're a good man, Shepard. You don't deserve this."

 

"There are so many things I need to say to you now. I always loved you. I knew you were so good. Everything I did, it was for you. When I didn’t know how to go forward, I did the things I thought you would want. I just didn't understand what that meant back then. I didn't understand who I am. It was hard for me to stop being a soldier and start being a person again." He's talking fast, he wants to get it all in before it's over. "Thank you for Horizon. You showed me the man I wanted to be, the man I could be. The man I had been, to you. I hope I lived up to it. You were the last thing I thought of before I died. I was about to do something that would change the face of the galaxy. I was terrified. I didn't know if I was doing the right thing. I tried to pictured you smiling. I pictured you being proud."

 

"I am proud. You're so much better than you think you are, Shepard. I promise. I’ll never think of you as a bad man. No matter what you did or how you felt. I've seen you, and I know who you are."

 

Shepard moves his hand between Kaidan's shoulderblades, splays his fingers. "I know everything you could possibly tell me. I know things you could never put into words. You don’t have to say any of it now. It's in me and it's mine."

 

“Thank you. It makes it easier. It does. I'd be thinking for months after. I ... well. You know."

 

Shepard nods. Kaidan can feel the movement rather than see it.

 

"I made this place for you. You will never know all the things I wanted to give you, Kaidan."

 

It was light enough now that the sea had broken from the sky, a glow skirting off on the horizon. Murky grey against black, less like light than like smoke.

 

"What are you going to do now?"

 

"Destroy the fleet. The mass relays will be finished soon. I'm glad I got to give that back. I don’t know how long it would have taken for us to repair them on our own. I had ... options. I could have destroyed them all when the Crucible fired, right then and there. And I could have lived, if I had done that. I like that I can tell myself I gave up everything I had to make us all a galaxy again. And I guess that's how this all ends. The mass relays were restored. A girl was saved. I was with you one last time. And then we all return to the void. I won’t get a third chance, Kaidan."

 

“You never had a first one.”

 

Kaidan finds Shepard's face in the dark, their mouths together. Not a kiss. He shares his breath.

 

"What about me, about us?"

 

"You don't think they'd notice, do you? Just one lone ship out there in the dark. Along tides of light and through shoals of dust."

 

“I will return to where I began,”Kaidan finishes.

 

Shepard meets his eyes.

 

“I can’t, Shepard.”

 

“I know. I’m sorry.” Shepard looks away. “Tell Jack it wasn’t her because she already understands more about me than I could ever show her.”

 

“I will.”

 

Kaidan looks out at the ocean, follows Shepard's gaze.

 

“You know, the last time we met, I had to move your arms around me when we kissed. This time, you made me a whole world.”

 

When he wakes up he’s in the sick bay of the Normandy. The Reaper is gone. His face is wet with tears.

 

==

 

Somewhere in the galaxy there is an uncharted world with several moons. One of them was inhabited, a garden world, a world of oceans, seas of unfathomable depth and creatures of extraordinary beauty and tremendous size. The inhabitants destroyed themselves cycles before the rise of the Protheans. The world was white dust. It was bone. In the cradle of that moon lays a body, somewhere between a creature and a ship, with the claws and fins and vastness of its predecessors, as if it’s gone to an ancestral graveyard to die.

 

Snow falls on that moon - or simply, more white dust. A particle storm. Burnt flecks from the rent hull of the dying Reaper mix with the dust, the color of ash.

 

In the deepest part of the ship, in the cradle of the vatworks, a heart begins to beat. Breath fogs the glass.

 

All this will come around again.


End file.
